More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships • Hacker News Board

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#671

Post by TaylorAlexander » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #458

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #345

Price of college is going up. Wages are stagnating. Quite unfortunately, it makes perfect sense that fewer people would think the expense is worthwhile. I wish we offered free high quality university educations. The USA can coast on its dominance for only so long before the lack of educated people sinks us.

> I wish we offered free high quality university educations. You could sponsor somebody's university or college education, pay a full or part scolarship.

Not really. I’m working for a non profit and not particularly flush with cash.

Besides, my point is that I wish we had nation wide free university. Let’s say I had more money and I put three kids through college. Pretty cool to do that but that’s not going to change the USA’s strategic position in the world. I’m talking about free public education for all because of how it would benefit the nation.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#672

Post by meh8881 » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #508

meh8881 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People talking about the economics of college and citing their experience from over two decades ago as if it’s supposed to be comparable to today is really frustrating.

The economics wasn’t the important part. The things I learned studying ancient history and linguistics and how those have made me a better person and developer are. I do understand how much tuition has skyrocketed. The year I graduated, tuition was $1,360 per semester. In 2023, tuition is $3,152 per semester. That is a $1,792 increase only 25 years (I graduated in 1998)

The economics are absolutely an important part. Your school is very cheap. That’s nice.

But you may well feel differently if you school had been 100x more expensive. Which is not a hyperbolic example.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#673

Post by thomastjeffery » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 6:15 PM UTC

latency-guy2 wrote: post #592

thomastjeffery wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Church is more equivalent to hobby clubs and work. Church is focused on a specific narrative, whether that be religious belief or generalized "unity". No matter how casual the experience, churches have purpose and exclusivity . The third place isn't only physically missing: it's missing in our social behavior. It could easily exist in public parks, but we are expected to avoid strangers.

The other place you are missing in your life is self inflicted. No one stops you from going to church, you are. Capitalism created so many opportunities for you to choose that you are now afraid of making a choice. At what point will you stop saying > It could easily exist in public parks, but we are expected to avoid strangers. And instead admit that YOU don't want to meet strangers, and that YOU expect others to av…

> No one stops you from going to church, you are.

And, as an atheist, why in the hell would I?

If I attend a church, I will be expected to participate. At the very least, whatever narrative that church focuses on will be the topic of a significant portion of conversation. That is entirely contradictory to the "third place" I am talking about.

Your insinuation that I am the problem for choosing not to embrace a church as my third place proves my point. I can't even talk to you about the idea of a third place without you evangelizing in response.

Like you said, there are a million things: every one of them has an intentional purpose: a predetermined subject. Every one of them has the potential for meeting people, but "meeting people" is not the point!

> So no. I won't listen

Exactly. Here we stand in a world where most people (including you) are only willing to listen to the people from their chosen social groups. We can't even talk to each other without first sorting ourselves into categories of interest!

This is the failure of church: unification by demand. One narrative to rule them all; but in reality, competing with many other narratives. Why must we join a team in the first place? It's it really that hard to just talk to each other?

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#674

Post by thomastjeffery » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

diceduckmonk wrote: post #568

thomastjeffery wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is: where? The alternative is a variety of places, and practically all of them have some kind of tax; where it be coffee, alcohol, or some kind of membership fee. What we are missing is called, "the third place".

That was kind of the vision of WeWork, for better or worst. An extended college dorm for white collar workers

That's even worse than a bar: you basically have to pay rent, and most of the people around you are intently focused on something.

The point of a third place, at least as I see it, is to have no purpose at all. Just be around other people and talk about whatever.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#675

Post by black_13 » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 6:35 PM UTC

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Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#676

Post by Forgeties79 » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

whateverman23 wrote: post #602

Forgeties79 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the forms of education here are pretty darn distinct. Didn’t say it wasn’t worth it/wasn’t valuable. Same reason we have conservatories like with ballet.

You can definitely get degrees in ballet/dancing, though. There are plenty of universities specializing in performance arts.

Yes but those who want to perform often go to conservatories which are structured around the art/discipline first. We have no such equivalent for sports, except we sort of do and pretend they’re still there primarily for the education (basically every football team in the SEC).

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#677

Post by runlaszlorun » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #604

wolverine876 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of blithering, you are only parroting some Internet tropes in an echo chamber (which is probably where you learned them). You know by now that such things are nonsense; they are a waste of time and a poison to knowledge and reason. And I think you are far behind the times - I'm not sure many people study Derrida these days. What have you read recently?

> What have you read recently? "Embrace the Suck", by Gleeson. (Yet another Navy SEAL memoir. This author seems to enjoy the suffering a bit too much. Other SEAL memoirs describe the same training, but not with such enthusiasm for the pain.)

I’m going out on a limb here… but did they all tell you about how hard ‘hell week’ was?

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#678

Post by TaylorAlexander » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #642

confidantlake wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need an army to defend our nation. You could stand at the border with a rifle.

There are thousands of scholarships. What do you think they are? They are people like the parent commenter, who think other people deserve a good education, and decide to put their money where their mouth is. And yes, if somebody calls for war, they should be the first to sign up for joining the military. Everybody should put their money where their mouth is.

Personally I find this mode of argument, where someone talks about a collective action problem and then someone else replies “well why don’t you do it then” distracting and unhelpful. Collective action problems, by definition, cannot be solved by individual actions. We must first discuss the problem and reach agreement.

Pretending that collective actions can be solved by individual action seems to me only to be a tactic to defeat the efforts of those seeking collective change.

I should note you never commented on the merits of free university for all. You’ve diverted the conversation in to one about individuals, successfully avoiding addressing the key point I was making.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#679

Post by pen2l » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 7:31 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #650

nequo wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the way that it keeps giving well after you graduate from college.

That’s equally vacuous. In what way is it beneficial?

Steve Jobs famously wanted to hire people that weren't just good programmers but people with serious and passionate side hobbies and pursuits (music, art, poetry etc.)

Have a broader awareness of things, of other arts, of history, of other crafts must make you better in the area of your core competence in some way I must imagine. For a computer programmer at Apple who is going to be designing a macbook, it's probably better that he have some inkling of what that machine's enduser would be doing with it. Is he going to be making music? Spending a lot of time watching political videos on youtube? Having insight into people, into other crafts will let him make a better machine.

Skills transfer across domains all around, sometimes wholesale and other times in small subtle ways. I was always stunned, for example, in reading Einstein's essays on subjects others than physics. His writings on politics, music, religion etc. reveal a man of tender awareness and care. Would he have gone on to develop the theory of relativity if he had not read works of Immanuel Kant? Leonardo da Vinci, Donald Knuth, Archimedes, the examples are aplenty for accomplished figures who had their hand in many jars.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#680

Post by logicalmonster » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 7:54 PM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #26

College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people…

> A lot of people have been tricked into going to general education and liberal arts college programs (the finishing school parts) without the money to pay in full under the guise of "becoming a lifelong learner" or something

This rush for everybody to complete a college education arguably wasn't caused by some kind of natural cultural phenomenon, but was an artificial intervention in the employment market. The Supreme court case Griggs v. Duke Power Company was a landmark employment discrimination case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, high school diplomas and intelligence test scores such as IQ tests were judged to be no longer allowed to be used as prerequisites for employment.

In an environment where companies are scared of testing IQs and easily proving a job-seekers basic competency, it's easy to see how a "college degree" became the standard proxy for proving basic competency and somebody having the ability to be trained for a non-trivial job.

And as a society, that's been a jaw-droppingly awful trade. Rather than take maybe a few tests when you start to look for a white collar job: we've compelled all of of our youth to attend at least 4 years of education that they usually don't need (wasting 4 years of income-earning potential), and to go deep into debt as the basic standard of life. This has many unbelievably negative second order effects on the world, including drastic consequences for the most responsible people starting families.